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What's so special about a son? Why doesn't she care about her daughters?' Mary Hocking brings good humour and sympathy to her depiction of the Fairley sisters growing up in their close-knit West London neighbourhood before, during and after the war. Here, in the first novel of a trilogy, the girls are sheltered in a world whose traditions of hard work and frugality are upheld by their Methodist father, Stanley, and their strong quiet mother, Judith. But, as love comes to Louise and adventures tempt Alice and her friend, unease lurks and terrible rumours travel from Germany - auguries of the catastrophe to come.
Their family has always been a living thing, its members encompassing supporting each other, confident in the indestructible bond of kinship. Murdoch and Janet Saunders, Hugh, Stephanie, Katrina, Malcolm, and Humphrey the dog. Murdoch stands at the head of the family, a highly respected novelist. But Janet is its true centre. She has guarded them all, protected them from wavering doubt and disillusion. She has always been there. Now the last of her brood has left home leaving her without a purpose. Her children plan fresh careers for her without understanding her loss. Murdoch too is undergoing some kind of transformation. Perhaps Janet, so sensitive to his writing gift, realises that this also is slipping away? Abandoned, suddenly adrift in a sea of black despair, she has no shelter, no moorings, no direction. How will she manage? How will her family manage? Unblinkingly honest, Mary Hocking's novel is warm, refreshing and utterly contemporary.
In 1939, as they leave school, Constance and Sheila vow to keep in touch. Posted to Ireland in the WRNS, Constance marries Fergus, a gregarious Irishman. Before long, stifled by domesticity and motherhood, she envies Sheila, writing poetry and married to the fiercely creative Miles. Gradually, however, a different reality emerges, for Constance has unacknowledged talents of her own, while Sheila's public success is bought at great personal cost. From the war to the 1980s, Constance writes to Sheila of her everyday hopes and sorrows, and through her we learn much of Sheila's gallantry and courage. We learn, too, of the social and political developments that challenge and shape her values, until finally outside events come too close and the fragile balance of Constance's own world is threatened. This is an unforgettable portrait of a friendship, and much more. While Letters from Constance explores personal experiences with humour, tenderness and acuity, it is an equally fascinating microcosm of the years it surveys.
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From Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith to Val McDermid and JK Rowling, After Agatha is an indispensable guide to women's crime writing over the last century and an exploration of why women read crime Spanning the 1930s to present day, After Agatha charts the explosion in women's crime writing and examines key developments on both sides of the Atlantic: from the women writers at the helm of the UK Golden Age and their American and Canadian counterparts fighting to be heard, to the 1980s experimental trio, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, who created the first female PIs, and the more recent emergence of forensic crime writing and domestic noir thrillers such as Gone Girl and...
The arrival of a mysterious new psychiatrist at March House, the psychiatric clinic where Ruth works, heralds the collapse of her entire world. Dr Laver is flamboyant, vulgar, possibly even unethical - but he starts Ruth on an uneasy journey through the past, in which she glimpses her parents for the first time as separate people, in which her wholesome country life seems filled with madness and pain, and in which the happy childhood she thought she had crumbles away to reveal something quite different. In the characters who compose Ruth's world - her cousin Hilda, her mother, he father's woman friend Eleanor, the mad old lady Miss Maud - the author displays all her characteristic wit, and her deep understanding of human motivation. Mary Hocking charts the transformation in the relationship between father and daughter, between Ruth and her colleagues, with great subtlety, drawing us further and further into this landscape of the mind till the final moving conclusion.
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All work covered in the Pupil's Book is reinforced by exercises in the workbook. Designed to be introduced and explained by the teacher and then to be completed independently, either in the classroom or for homework, it allows children to work at their own pace giving teachers the opportunity to see what children can achieve when working alone.
Frostfire by Amanda Hocking is the stunning first installment in a tale of love, betrayal and the need to belong, the Kanin Chronicles. Will she give up her dream to follow her heart? Bryn Aven is determined to gain status amongst the Kanin, the most powerful of the hidden tribes. But as a half-blood, winning respect is a huge challenge. Bryn's almost-human community distrusts people, and those from other tribes are almost as suspect. She has just one goal to get ahead: to join the elite guard protecting the Kanin royal family. And Bryn's vowed that nothing will stand in her way, not even a forbidden romance with her boss, Ridley Dresden. But her plans are put on hold when fallen hero Konstantin starts acting dangerously. Bryn loved him once, but now he's kidnapping Kanin children - stealing them from hidden placements within human families. She's sent to help stop him, but will she lose her heart in the process?